Buhari appointments: Fighting fire with fire

ABOUT one week after President Muhammadu Buhari made his last set of appointments, and raised quite a storm in the process, the controversy is threatening to become sectional. On August 27, the president had appointed six close staff, including the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and  the Chief of Staff, and heads of the Customs and Immigration. Many commentators and politicians, particularly from the Southeast, criticised the appointments, which they said were skewed, insensitive and sectional. President Buhari appointed those he could trust and who merited the offices they were given, argued his supporters, party and aides. The presidency further explained that the appointments were just starting, and no one, let alone ethnic groups, would be short-changed.


When all is said and done, All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesmen enthused, everything and all the appointments would balance out.

While it is uncertain that the Southeast could be persuaded by the president’s arguments, some northern groups have rallied robustly to his defence. One group in particular, the Concerned Elders of the North (CEN), flung in the public face a list of offices occupied by southeastern and South-South appointees under the Goodluck Jonathan presidency. In the CEN list, the Southeast and South-South virtually colonised the ‘commanding heights’ of both the economy and politics. In two ministries, for example, according to the list, the Southeast was shown to have suffocated other sections of the country, claiming that all appointments were done on merit.

If the list were to be elongated, hinted CEN, some other startling facts could be unearthed, alarming and discomfiting very many people, including beneficiaries and victims of the arbitrariness of federal appointments in Nigeria. The CEN list came up with about 35 Jonathan federal appointments in almost perfect counterpoise to the 31 or so Buhari appointments. There seems to be some weird logic in fighting fire with fire, number with number, and zone with zone.

But the exertions of the shadowy elders from the North were quixotic. Their list of the Jonathan era appointments was probably accurate but disturbing, just as the Buhari list has perplexed many and injured sectional feelings. Both lists speak ingloriously to the schisms disemboweling the country such that after many epochal crises, a civil war, and the ethical and material pillage undertaken by successive military regimes, lessons have not been learnt, nor have Nigerian leaders seemed capable of summoning the sensitivity, balance and altruism that the high offices they occupy demand.

It is curious how history is repeating itself in the controversies accompanying the appointments. To answer allegations of skewed appointments under Dr Jonathan, the former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, argued passionately that merit and nothing else was responsible for the seeming slant. No one should blame the Southeast for being so successful in ‘meriting’ the appointments, she added in pained excitement. Explaining the current appointments, President Buhari and his aides have also suggested that nothing but merit was responsible for the slant so far. Merit, it seems, is the new boondoggle. It will be done to death in explaining appointments before this decade is over.

As the country emerges from President Buhari’s controversial appointments and Dr Jonathan’s equally indefensible structuring of his presidency and federal establishments, the lessons of history may serve some useful purpose. Not too long ago in 1975, former head of state Gen Murtala Mohammed chose a young lieutenant, Akintunde Akinsehinwa, as his Aide-de-Camp. Since then an ADC has not been lower in rank than a Lt.-Col., and preferably ethnically closer home. It appears the journey to true nationhood will be long and turbulent. Nor are there guarantees, going by what Dr Jonathan and his predecessors and successors did, that the lessons history teaches will be learnt or even acknowledged.